The widow endured the cold looks and cutting words of her husband's relatives, and even the reproaches which they heaped upon his folly, with a widow's patience, and seemed content to remain a poor, broken-down, dependent creature. Miss Pillbody, on the contrary, was quick to discern and to resent, mentally, the uncivil treatment daily experienced by her mother and herself. Had she been alone in the world, she would have left those inhospitable roofs when the unkind hints first began to be dropped, and trusted to the cold charity of strangers; but she could not bear the thought of being separated from her mother. So she endured her wretched state of dependence as best she could, while she quietly sought for some means of employment that would yield them a living. Profiting by the lessons she had learned from her uncles, she did not apply to any person who had known her father and received favors from him in their better days. She asked no favor from any one--only work, at a fair price. By diligent hunting, she found several opportunities. She could earn four dollars a week by embroidering (at which she was skilful, and had taken premiums); or two dollars and a half for teaching French, twice a week, in a country seminary; or her board and washing for inducting a family of four little musical prodigies into all the mysteries of the piano. But these tempting offers would still have left her mother with her uncles, and she spurned them all. CHAPTER V. A FRIEND IN NEED. One day, as Miss Pillbody was riding up Broadway, in tending to visit a Teachers' Agency for the sixteenth time, she accidentally made the acquaintance of a middle-aged lady, who talked a great deal upon the slightest provocation, trifled sadly with grammar and pronunciation, and was excessively friendly and amiable. The diamonds in her ears and on her fingers, and her overdone and gaudy style of dressing, were some indication, though not a convincing one, that she was a woman of wealth; and Miss Pillbody made bold to ask her if she knew anybody who wanted a private teacher in her family. The lady said she did not, "unless," she added, laughing very loud at the humor of the suggestion, "you come into my family, and learn me something."